In Kanduhar, Hamid Karzai’s younger brother knows just what he needs to help combat the Taliban and restore security to his troubled southern Pashtun provinces – US Marines.
He’s fulsome in his praise of American fighters:
Amid the recent deluge of discouraging reports citing declining security in swaths of southern Afghanistan, Karzai’s is a rare voice of optimism, claiming that U.S. special forces already have begun to turn the tide in Kandahar with targeted strikes against individual commanders of the fundamentalist group, which was ousted from power six years ago.
“These operations are extremely quiet. They cause no civilian casualties and no damage to the villages,” said Karzai, whose power derives in part from being the younger brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
“The Americans are very professional,” he said. “They go in; they get out. It’s just like you see in the movies.”
Well, Marines are many things but – with the exception of the relatively small number of Force Recon types – they are very rarely “quiet.”
But quiet or otherwise, Karzai will be getting his Marines: The 24th MEU from Camp Lejeune, NC will deploy 2,200 Marines this spring to work under NATO command in southern Afghanistan , while another thousand or so from 2/7 in Twenty-nine Palms will remain under US TACON while training Afghan security forces.
Everybody gets what they wish for.
“When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers.” — Oscar Wilde
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3101214,00.html
This is a recent article about Germany’s refusal to send more troops to Afghanistan.
According to the article, the U.S. currently has 29,000 troops in country. I believe this number is prior to the announced increase of Marines. The total NATO force in Afghanistan is 40,000. Canada has 2,500 troops in country and Germany 3,500. Germany is claiming a “parlimentary mandate” of a 3,500 troop maximum. And heh, they are not allowed to fight in Southern Afghan. Only the U.S., Brits, Aussies and Canadians are in the real fire fight. Everyone else is garrosoned in the north training police officers…
This whole NATO thing is not really working out …
What is the opposite of the tip of the spear? The butt? The Germans specialize in being butts.
It seems to me the German military role is constrained by their constitution, which we helped write after World War II. I may be wrong but I don”t think so.
“This whole NATO thing” hasn’t worked out in a very long time excepting a few serious & capable participants. About the same serious participants we see now.
It’s probably too easy to be hard on Germany. The foundational assumptions of the Atlantic Alliance never included deployment to central Asia. It was intended to keep America in Europe, Russia out and fascists down.
Really Lex? What about the other 20 nations in NATO? The U.S. owns 75% of the force in Afghanistan. Hell, the EU can’t even get a couple of helicopters together to help the ADF with Darfur…
This NATO thing is not working out too well…